My first word was "dog". That was a linguistic phenomenon, apparently, the "d" coming from the front of the mouth and the "g" from the back. My sister's first words were Sardo pecorino. I think it would be safe to say that I grew up in a cheese environment. With an inferiority complex. One time, my mother bought an epoisse so violent and powerful that she thought she had a gas leak, and I am not kidding, called a man out.

The piece of praise I remember from my childhood is when that same mother said I was very good at choosing cheese. I suppose I was about eight. I am not for one moment suggesting she was stingy (or at all cheese-paring) with her compliments - she probably said a load of other stuff I was good at - but this stuck because it was one of those skills you can't exchange for anything. It's not like you're going to get a good GCSE out of it, or a job. It's not as if a parent is going to boast about your cheese-choosing skills at their retirement party. All you will get out of choosing good cheese is some good cheese.

So in a way, it's like the moment you ascend from coveting to appreciating - the point at which you can look at a piece of art, or a city, and love it without wanting to own it. The analogy isn't exact, of course; you should never eat cheese that you don't own.

There was an interim of 10 years or so; much cheese was consumed. I think of these as my cheddar years. Cheddar is the Dickens of cheeses: incredibly opinionated but totally inoffensive. It's as much a waste of a young palate as Dickens is a waste of a young memory. If you'd just spent that time on stilton, for example, or Shakespeare, you'd have a brilliant skill-set to transfer to adult life, instead of some knowledge about a totally mainstream cheese. Now I feel disloyal; cheddar has a lot going for it. I just have a problem with any cheese whose role in a sandwich is easily matched by that of pickle. A real cheese can see off a pickle, laughing. Please don't take from that that I don't like pickle.

University was a cheese-blur. Maybe I was taking drugs. It amazes me, and yet is completely true, that when I came back to London in 1994, people still would not in their wildest dreams have thought to find a decent cheese shop on their Wandsworth/ Dulwich/ Stoke Newington promenade. They would shruggingly journey in to Paxton & Whitfield, where they won't sell you Ami du Chambertin unless you say it in a silly voice, and they look at you funny if you try and buy stilton in any form other than a whole one, like you're trying to buy cigarettes singly because your nan doesn't get her pension until Monday.

Now, of course, you cannot throw a stick without it getting stuck in some high-quality cheese. Everyone is a cheese expert, and they spin you some right old blarney. I cannot tell you how many times matey round the corner has told me Monte Enebro was out of season, when really he just didn't have any.

But you don't embark on a lifelong voyage of discovery without expecting the odd flannel-artist. Some useful things I've been told, that are actually true, include: honey over stilton is delicious. Really, who could have predicted that? Never buy roquefort - the silly French rules were meant to make this an elite cheese, but have turned it into a production line where cheeses qualify for the name by spending a nanosecond in the right cave, and space in this cave is so sought after that the cheeses don't get to mature in their own time. Dolcelatte was invented by a dairy company (I learnt that at a wedding, from a guy who worked at said company as a marketing guy. Their office was full of cheese spittoons). Corsican feta does actually taste different from regular feta - for ages, I thought this prefix was just a way of making it sound posh. Haloumi is not really cheese, it is made of genetically modified snake. I still like it though, I just experience it through a different range of enjoyment sensors. While buffalo mozzarella is the highest of the high, all other buffalo products are minging, and I know that for a cast-iron fact. My local farmer's market, instead of selling miraculous cheeses and tear-jerking chutneys, has a tomato stall, a goat stall and a buffalo stall.

I'm going to move quite soon. I may be good at choosing cheese; I don't seem to be particularly good at choosing neighbourhoods that are good for cheese. I'll work on it.